


AN 


Wit*- 


ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFOKE 




• 

THE ASSOCIATION 


OP THE 




ALUMNI OF HARVARD 


COLLEGE, 


JULY 20, 1854. 




BY 




CORNELIUS C. FELTON, 


LL.D. 


PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 




CAMBRIDGE: 




PUBLISHED BY JOHN BARTLETT. 


1854. 





AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE ASSOCIATION 



ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 



JULY 20, 1854. 



CORNELIUS (TEELTON, LL.D. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



CAMBRIDGE 

Y JOH 

1854. 



PUBLISHED BY JOHN BAETLETT. 



y 



-A if 

<t 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 

JOHN BARTLETT, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



ADDRE SS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : — 

As I entered the harbor of Boston, after an absence 
of more than a year ; as I gazed upon the islands and 
shores reposing under a lovely evening sky in May, and 
upon the lighted mansions, where happiness and free- 
dom nestle secure ; as, an hour after, the halls of Har- 
vard greeted my view, and the lights from students' 
rooms, and from the dwellings of friends and neigh- 
bors, streamed through the evening air, the familiar 
lines of the poet involuntary moved harmonious num- 
bers in my memory : — 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ; 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 
As home his footsteps he hath turned 
From wandering on a foreign strand ? " 

But scarcely landed from an Atlantic voyage, I was 
waylaid by your committee, and ordered to stand and 
deliver — an oration. To me who am no orator, as so 
many Brutuses I see around me are, the order was suf- 
ficiently formidable, but not to be evaded. I acknowl- 
edge the honor of being invited to address such an 
assembly on such an occasion ; but, flattering as the 



invitation was, I felt conscious of being led to under- 
take the task more by good-will to my brethren of 
the University than by any reasonable hope of fulfil- 
ling their just expectations. 

Gentlemen, the tie between us on this occasion is 
our common relationship as sons of Harvard. We 
come together, under the shadow of her ancient halls 
and academic groves, to brighten and strengthen the 
golden chain that binds us, remotely or directly, to our 
Alma Mater. Welcome to the pleasant light of this 
day, and to the blessed associations of friendship and 
letters, and to the dear memories of youth, with which 
its dawn came freighted to our hearts. We are gath- 
ered here to-day from many divergent walks of life, — 
from the beaten and weary paths of labor, from the 
conflicts of the Senate and the Forum, from the sa- 
cred desk, from the teacher's chair, from the bed- 
side of the sick and dying, — to spend a few hours 
together, as friends, gentlemen, scholars, — as sons of 
Harvard, — forgetting the things which divide us in 
the secular turmoils of the world, and remembering 
only those that unite us, in this Sabbath of lettered 
and social delight. 

We come together as alumni of Harvard, under au- 
spices peculiarly cheering for the present, and pro- 
phetic of good for the future. Ruled by a succession 
of Presidents, whose names form no small part of the 
honor of the country, our University has steadily ad- 
vanced, with more than youthful vigor. I see before 
me the venerable form of one, — the only survivor of 
his class, — who gave to her service more than sixteen 
of the best years of his life ; whose heart still throbs 
with the fires of youth under the snows of fourscore ; 



whose voice like the voice of Nestor is still heard, in 
clarion tones, when a public wrong threatens to tar- 
nish the fair fame of his country ; who, with an undy- 
ing love for the cherishing mother of his intellectual 
youth, still crowns our literary festivals with the 
benediction of his presence. Another distinguished 
alumnus — whose rich scholarship had long been the 
pride of our literature, and whose varied eloquence, 
heard from the desk, from the professor's chair, from 
the halls of legislation, from popular meetings, from 
great panegyrical assemblies in honor of the illustri- 
ous dead, seemed to revive in our republic the gra- 
ces of republican eloquence in ancient Athens — has 
linked his name and fame with the distinctions of our 
University. The historian, whose labors have eluci- 
dated the fairest pages in the annals of the heroic age 
of America, has consecrated his learning and ability, 
as professor and president, to the service of Harvard : 
and now, when the guidance of the University has 
been intrusted to the steady hand of the eminent 
philosopher and divine, who, with the approbation of 
the governing bodies, and the consenting applause of 
all good men, has taken his place in that lengthening 
line, she is still advancing in her career of usefulness 
and honor, with increasing tokens of popular regard 
and practical success. 

I say further, that we come together to-day under 
auspices peculiarly nattering to the prosperity of the 
cause of sound education and literary culture, — of sci- 
entific progress and the refinements of art. These 
scenes — so dear to our youth — have lost no charm 
even to those of us, in whose sight the realm of youth 
has faded into a distant Elysian field. We, too, may 
exclaim with the poet : — 



" I feel the gales that from ye blow 
A momentary bliss bestow, 

As, waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And, redolent of joy and youth, 
To breathe a second Spring." 

But human life, in its most favored forms, is a 
mingled story of joy and sorrow. The recollections 
of an hour like this, however pleasant, come to us 
touched with the sad but inevitable hues of mourning 
and bereavement. We look in vain to-day for more 
than one friend, formerly wont to greet us here. The 
beautiful retirement, so long graced by the virtues of 
Norton, is no longer cheered by his placid presence. 
That profound theologian and elegant scholar, whose 
exactitude of thought and Attic purity of language 
rendered conversation as instructive as the best of 
books, and whose refined cordiality made social life 
delightful, — whose mind moved, with a native stateli- 
ness, in the higher region of human thought, — who 
vindicated, with all the resources of deep and various 
learning, the records of the Christian faith from the 
excesses of a too daring historical scepticism, in a style 
of unrivalled clearness and power, — has passed from 
the scene of earthly labor and enjoyment to the em- 
ployments and joys of immortality. But his gracious 
shade still seems to haunt yonder sweet seclusion, and 
his placid smile to welcome with serenest salutation 
the returning friend. Another associate of former 
days I see no more, — the late Professor Greenleaf, 
— ours by adoption, — who, after a youth of toil and 
patient suffering, gave the rich maturity of his years to 
the elucidation of the Law in this place, the priceless 
value of whose instructions is now acknowledged as 



far as the widening boundaries of our republic extend ; 
who, not born to affluence, and not bred up to schol- 
arly studies, achieved an honorable scholarship in the 
university of life ; who, as a professional author, placed 
his name high among the highest, and as a Christian 
writer gained the gratitude of believers, by founding 
the Christian faith on the basis of rigorous legal argu- 
ment ; to whom belongs the glory of having drawn up 
the first written constitution for an oppressed and suf- 
fering continent, and for a race that has drunk the 
bitter draught of slavery since the gray dawn of the 
history of man. He, too, has passed away, in the sleep 
of the righteous, but he has left us the imperishable 
monument of his high ability and spotless character, 
and the memory of his faithfulness to the good of man 
and the honor of God. More recently, and more im- 
mediately connected with our Alma Mater, the genial 
Sales has died. His beaming countenance and cheery 
voice, and hearty pressure of the hand, gladdened our 
hearts, whenever we met him " in his customed way." 
In his fervid youth he fled from the Old World to win 
here the freedom of thought and action he sought in 
vain among his native Pyrenees. Who can forget the 
erect and manly figure, the pleasant countenance, the 
frank and cordial salutation, the contagious and inex- 
tinguishable laugh, of that old man with the powdered 
head, whom, alas ! we shall see no more in this world, 
— by whose death the attractions of Harvard are les- 
sened and its gayety eclipsed. And busy memory re- 
calls the name of Farrar, the patient invalid of many 
years, whose studious manhood was given to the Uni- 
versity ; who knew how to illuminate the truth of sci- 
ence by the charm of an eloquence, which we, of the 



8 



middle period of life, listened to in our student days 
with never satiating delight : — he has found in the re- 
pose of the tomb a refuge from the protracted suffer- 
ings, which, though borne with constancy, clouded the 
serenity of his spirit in the closing years of his life. 
Beloved memories of the dead mingle with the pleasant 
greetings and social joys of the living, and the eye 
wanders to many a vacant place, — 



And phantoms sway each haunt well known, 
Which the loved and lost were wont to own.' 



As we move onward in the procession of life, it 
becomes us to pause at the often opening gate of the 
tomb, and, having paid our tribute of grateful recol- 
lection to the loved and good who have preceded us 
across its solemn threshold, to draw instruction and 
encouragement from their examples, and then, sobered 
by the thoughts of death, to reassume the tasks of 
duty, striving so to live that the world shall be the 
better, and that our names, like theirs, may be hal- 
lowed memories to those who shall come after us. 

Gentlemen, the occasion which has called us to- 
gether, and the names of the departed, which naturally 
dwell upon our lips in this place, suggest the topic, on 
which I deem it not inappropriate to the day, and to 
this cultivated audience, to speak for the brief space 
allotted me : — the relations of our country to the lit- 
erature, science, and art of the world, and the special 
duty of the American people to uphold and promote 
them. 

The educated men of a country are those who have 
been trained up in the nurture of science, the cultiva- 
tion of letters, the embellishments of art. The foun- 



9 



dations of their speculative and practical life have 
been laid in the study of truth ; and it is to be pre- 
sumed that a guiding influence has grown up from 
their early studies, controlling and shaping the course 
of conduct, however variously applied in the several 
pursuits and professions into which men are led by 
taste, inclination, or interest. For all professions, and 
all honorable pursuits, rest ultimately on general prin- 
ciples, — on science, on philosophy. Letters and 
art unfold the element of beauty, and clothe the dig- 
nity of life with the graceful attractions of taste. A 
liberal education, gentlemen, pledged you, as by early 
vows, in whatever chosen career your courses may 
have run, to cherish the love of letters, and to keep 
your loyalty to science, according to the full measure 
of your ability. There are many patriotic duties ; but 
in my judgment there is no duty more purely patriotic 
than that of vindicating the worth and dignity of 
intellectual pursuits ; there are many cosmopolitan 
duties, but none of higher obligation than that of add- 
ing something to the world's intellectual treasury, 
upon which we are ourselves for ever drawing. 

I deem it a peculiar felicity that our Cambridge 
University sustains relations so intimate with the 
neighboring city of Boston. From the earliest days 
of our Commonwealth, a series of mutual benefits, 
a constant interchange of high services, have marked 
each successive period of their common history. Com- 
merce, spreading her woven wings over every sea, 
brings the wealth of every land into the coffers of the 
merchants of Boston ; and how nobly that wealth — 
the tribute of every clime to energies honorably and 
wisely directed — has been consecrated in no stinted 



10 



measure to intellectual progress, let the names of 
merchants answer, who have built these halls, helped 
to make these collections, endowed these professor- 
ships, enlarged this library. On the other hand, Har- 
vard has requited the benefaction by helping to elevate 
commerce beyond the love of money-making, which 
has sometimes been charged upon it in reproach. The 
sons of Harvard, — whether nurtured here in studious 
youth, or adopted from other and busier scenes into 
her literary family, — I rejoice to believe, have stood in 
the foremost ranks of the commercial as of other pro- 
fessions, and have done a manly part to give it that 
liberal character it enjoys, by universal consent, in the 
ancient city of the Puritans. The auspicious alliance 
between commerce and intellectual culture, so conspic- 
uous in the Athenian democracy, — so brilliant in the 
mediaeval republics of Italy, — seems once more to be 
reviving here. 

It has sometimes been made a question, whether the 
cultivation of science, letters, and art is favorable to 
public virtue and the maintenance of political liberty. 
It is supposed that such periods as the golden ages of 
Augustus and Louis XIV. show the affinity between 
a high state of culture and the most slavish maxims 
and most oppressive practices of despotism. No doubt 
a despot of enlightened views — a Polycrates, a Peri- 
ander, a Hiero — knows the wisdom of surrounding 
his court with the graces of letters and art ; no doubt 
rich pensions and regal luxury may blind the eyes of 
poets and scholars raised to wealth and social distinc- 
tion by the bounties of the throne. The courtly flat- 
teries of Horace and Virgil impose upon us by the 
dignity of antiquity and the classic stateliness of the 



11 



Roman tongue. But we feel the full baseness of the 
prostration of genius to power, when we read the im- 
pious adulation of Boileau to his royal master, the 
vain, profligate, and hollow-hearted king, whom the 
Muse of History has fawned upon by giving his name 
to the brilliant but superficial age which heralded the 
direst shame and disaster to a gallant victim. When, 
in the Jerusalem Delivered, — one of the noblest monu- 
ments of the genius of modern Italy, — we find Tasso 
hailing his ducal patron as the magnanimous Alphonso, 
we follow in imagination the unhappy poet to the nar- 
row and filthy dungeon into which he was cast by that 
magnanimous prince, to expiate in chains and madness 
the crime of loving a princess of the house whose 
name would long since have been forgotten but for 
Tasso's immortal verse. There are, indeed, enough 
and more than enough of such memorials of cringing 
and subserviency, in the ages which groaned under 
despotic rule. I claim for letters, science, and art no 
absolute power to raise their followers above the weak- 
nesses of human nature, and the influences of the 
times in which they live. I do not know that poets, 
scholars, and sages have a more unconditional passion 
for neglect, starvation, and martyrdom, than other 
mortals. Yet, as we look over the long array of 
famous men who have consecrated themselves to lofty 
studies, we cannot doubt that the air of liberty is the 
congenial atmosphere of the Muses ; that the most 
brilliant periods of letters, science, and art have been 
precisely the most auspicious periods of political free- 
dom. The age of Augustus was, doubtless, a great 
era for Roman letters ; but how feebly burned its 
lights compared with those which shine upon us from 



12 



the tumultuous supremacy of Athens ! and how the 
radiance of the Great Monarch himself, surrounded 
by poets and scholars, — even the Corneilles, Molieres, 
Racines, and Boileaus of those days, — grows dim before 
the wealth of art and poetry in the mighty expansion 
of genius which has clothed the Italian republics with 
imperishable renown. Yes, the Muses follow most 
willingly in the train of freedom ; — 

" Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant power, 
And coward vice that revels in her chains." 

The natural affinities of science, letters, and art are 
with honor, virtue, and liberty, and he is no friend of 
popular rights and republican government who refuses 
to encourage the higher cultivation of the intellect, 
exercised on its appropriate objects, among the citi- 
zens of a free country. The Almighty has inspired 
man with understanding, which can never rest content 
with outward prosperity and the joys of sense. He 
has an imagination demanding to be gratified ; a 
reason seeking insatiably for truth ; a sense of the 
beautiful, requiring to be ministered unto by the crea- 
tions of the inspired poet, the sculptor, the painter, 
the architect. His faculties embrace the world within 
him, and around him, and above him, — and his aspi- 
rations wander through eternity. To say that the 
exercise of these — the highest of the human facul- 
ties ■ — cannot find a fitting sphere in a republican 
polity, is to say that a republican polity fails to reach 
the noblest goal of humanity ; and that man must 
look elsewhere than to a republic for the truest devel- 
opment of the nature God has given him. From such 
premises no other conclusion is logical or possible. 



13 



And yet, in the face of such inevitable results, there 
are men who seek to win the favor of the people by 
cheapening the value of the higher sciences ; disparag- 
ing elegant letters, and stirring up jealousies against 
those men and those institutions which aim to raise 
the standard of culture, and to urge the progress of 
scientific growth beyond the measure of the palpable 
wants of practical life. The results they can see, 
touch, taste, handle, and weigh, are, in their apprehen- 
sion, the only objects of education or of study worthy 
of popular regard and public support. Against all 
such narrow views the friends of a true culture have 
to wage, in the real if not apparent interests of the 
people, an unceasing and very wearisome warfare. 
For man is placed in this universe, — so attractive and 
marvellous, — not that he may dine and sup and sleep 
and die and be forgotten, but that he may live the 
life of the intellect and the soul. He is created in the 
image of God : and God is not only omnipotent and 
omnipresent, but omniscient. According to the meas- 
ure of his faculties, let him then be like God in this, 
as well as his other attributes. If he cannot fathom 
the unfathomable mind of the Almighty, at least let 
him raise himself to the dignity of an intelligent spec- 
tator of the Almighty's works. Is man, when free, 
less fitted for these divine occupations than when en- 
slaved ? And is it to be settled as the republican doc- 
trine, that the Know-Nothing is the truest image of 
the All-knowing 1 ? 

It is a popular theme to exalt the present age above 
all the past: perhaps rightly. But if we scan the 
condition of the world, the eye of the most hopeful 
finds the prospect, if not absolutely melancholy, at 



14 



least a darkly shaded picture. Europe is even now 
bestridden by the Middle Ages, like a nightmare. — 
Old incorporated interests of caste, of church, of special 
privilege and hereditary rank, almost everywhere ob- 
struct the path of progress : as the habitations of men, 
built many centuries ago, compel their occupants to 
adapt themselves to their houses, instead of adapting 
their nouses to their own wants. In some of the 
countries of Europe, as in Prussia, education is admi- 
rably organized ; but the legitimate effects of such a 
system are stayed by the despotic principles of govern- 
ment. Men are bandaged and swathed by the re- 
straints of the police, as infants are rolled up in swad- 
dling-clothes to keep them from breaking their limbs. 
Of what avail for the true purposes of civic life are 
reading and writing and grammar, to a man whose 
personal identity is a passport, and who cannot be 
trusted as far as the next village without the gracious 
permission of a government official with a sword at his 
side and a moustache on his lip ] And what shall we 
say of polished France, — our old friend and generous 
ally, — who willingly bows her neck to the yoke of a 
rigorous despotism, and by a popular vote, unexampled 
in the history of elections, surrenders the hopes of 
constitutional government, silences the voice of par- 
liamentary eloquence, and chooses the autocratic will 
of an absolute, though enlightened master, for her in- 
exorable destiny 1 True, he is ruling by a right in 
one sense more legitimate than any other existing gov- 
ernment. He is making Paris the centre of European 
civilization, and the most superb city of the continent. 
He is consolidating his throne on the prosperity of the 
Empire ; while radicals and reformers so lately stand- 



15 



ing on the pinnacle of fame and power — the very 
idols of a worshipping people — are languishing in 
prison, dragging out a monotonous existence in penal 
colonies, or sighing in nameless obscurity over the 
blight of political theories which they loved, not wisely 
but too well. But with all this outward show of pros- 
perity there is no free expression of opinion. The voice 
of eloquence is hushed ; art is becoming a flatterer to 
the Imperial will ; history cannot safely tell the whole 
truth and nothing but the truth ; and the enthusiasm 
of science is growing feebler and fainter amidst the 
clang of arms, and the mimic warfare of camps and 
reviews. 

Strangely contrasted with the brilliant and powerful 
empire of Aance are the comparatively powerless 
states of Sardinia, presenting yet one of the brightest 
features in the aspect of Continental Europe. The 
honest and enlightened monarch of these states, though 
descended from despots, dares to give his people liber- 
ty, and to build up the institutions of freedom amidst 
surrounding despotisms. He dares to give them a 
constitution, though it may clip the prerogatives of his 
crown ; he trusts them with popular elections, ^hough 
parliamentary opposition to his ministry may spring 
up ; he fears not liberty of speech and the press, 
though these formidable engines may be and have been 
turned against himself. He dares to throw aside the 
superstitious observances by which his ancestors sig- 
nalized their subjection to a haughty Church, though 
the Pope's legate demand his passport, and the Vatican 
muster its sleeping thunders. He makes churchman 
and layman equal before the law, though he draw upon 
himself the hatred of Vienna and Rome ; and he sup- 



16 



ports with strong arm the fabric of social order, inl- 
awed by the bitter imprecations of Red Republicans 
and the mystic anathemas of Mazzini. He is devel- 
oping the prosperity of his country by constructing 
roads and railways, encouraging manufactures and 
commerce, and relieving his people from the burdens 
transmitted by the Middle Ages. Education is an ob- 
ject of his special care. He has founded schools, and 
built up a great and noble university, in which science 
and letters are freely taught. The lovers of liberty 
from other states take refuge under the eegis of the 
constitutional government of Turin. Parliamentary 
eloquence — stranger so many centuries to those fair re- 
gions — is making its voice heard in the noble language 
of Italy. In proportion as he is hated b^ despots, the 
monarch is adored by his people. The happiness he 
has restored to them, by making them the masters of 
their material and intellectual resources, gives some 
hope, perhaps the only hope, that Italy will in time be 
regenerated by so brilliant an example. 

But the traveller, passing from the confines of this 
regenerated state, and wandering over the classic fields 
of Central and Southern Italy, encounters a melancholy 
change. He treads the ground consecrated to eternal 
fame by ancient achievements and by the transcendent 
glories of modern art. He gazes with emotion too deep 
for expression on the grandest creations of genius, which 
adorn in affluent profusion these seats of ancient re- 
nown. Added to these splendid results of civilization, 
he beholds the Christian religion changing the aspects 
of life. He enters the church of Christ, gorgeous with 
the spoils of the ages. He gazes admiringly upon the 
glorious pile, reared by mediaeval piety, and conse- 



17 



crated to the service of the Eternal. He listens to 
song and rite which seem to bear on the wings of de- 
votion the worshipping sonl up to the throne of God. 
But as he passes out from the curtained door of the 
sanctuary, his thoughts are rudely dragged to earth 
by the agonizing cries of human hearts, out of which 
hope and joy and every consoling thought have been 
pressed by the crushing despotism of ages. 

" How has kind Heaven adorned the happy land, 
And scattered blessings with a watchful hand ; 
But what avail her unexhausted stores, 
Her blooming mountains, and her sunny shores, 
With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart , 
The smiles of nature, and the charms of art, 
While proud oppression in her valleys reigns, 
And tyranny usurps her happy plains 1 
The poor inhabitant beholds in vain 
The reddening orange and the swelling grain ; 
Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines, 
And in the myrtle's fragrant shade repines ; 
Starves in the midst of nature's bounty curst, 
And in the loaded vineyard dies for thirst." 

Is this then the lame and impotent conclusion to 
which science and art and Christianity — to which 
modern genius and ancient fame — have conducted the 
race of man % Are despotism, priestcraft, profligacy, 
and beggary all that remain of the cheering visions 
that hovered before the minds of the lawgivers of the 
world, — the poets, the orators, preachers, saints, and 
martyrs ; — that breathe in the speculations of Plato 
and Cicero, in the stern verse of Dante, in the su- 
pernatural loveliness of Rafael's Madonnas, in the 
Apollo of the Vatican, the Transfiguration, the Dome 
of St. Peter's'? Are all these inspired thoughts em- 
bodied in matchless forms but the prelude, the over- 
ture, to a hideous drama of beggary and fraud, and filth 



18 



and death \ God forbid that the ideal shapes that 
have filled the teeming minds of poets and philosophers 
should prove to be all the airy pageants of an excited 
fancy ; that all the hopes of fair humanity, which 
have nerved the hearts of great leaders of men to do 
and dare, for the sake of a better future, should van- 
ish before the disenchanting touch of reality, as the 
dreams of the night flit away with the morning's 
dawn. 

Have we reason to hope, that letters, science, and 
art will ever be, in the highest forms, united with 
popular freedom and general happiness] And can 
we venture to anticipate, that our country has this 
sublime destiny to fulfil % It seems to me a singular 
oversight, that the framers of the Constitution of the 
United States should have omitted from their view the 
intellectual necessities of a great nation. Washington, 
in his Farewell Address, says : " Whatever may be 
conceded to the influence of refined education on minds 
of peculiar structure, reason and experience both for- 
bid us to expect that national morality can prevail in 
exclusion of religious Principles." And immediately 
after, as if the connection of ideas were too obvious to 
admit a moment's doubt, he adds : " Promote, then, as 
an object of primary importance, institutions for the 
general diffusion of knowledge," — knowledge being, 
in the judgment of that great man, expressed in the 
most solemn act of his life, the indispensable con- 
dition of national morality, as " morality is a necessary 
spring of popular government." We have doubtless 
adopted principles of general education, which, if 
faithfully adhered to, will lay an admirable foundation 
for the special development of science, letters, and art, 



19 



constituting the structure of American civilization. 
But when one of the most illustrious Presidents of the 
United States — a man who never, in the midst of 
public cares or the rivalries of the political arena, for- 
got the debt he owed to good learning — recommend- 
ed to Congress the establishment of an Observatory, a 
hue and cry was raised ; a kind of ypa<f>rj Trapavoficov, 
or impeachment for unconstitutional proceedings, was 
entered against him, as in ancient Athens, when the 
enemies of a great statesman thought they could wield 
this instrument to his damage in the estimation of the 
changeful Demos ; and no doubt the unconstitutional 
proposition to build an Observatory was a potent means 
of changing the administration of the country. It was 
a malignant star that shed its influence on that para- 
graph in President Adams's message ; but the stars 
grew milder at a later period, when the Observatory 
of Washington, which has conferred such signal bene- 
fit upon the country, was smuggled into existence 
under the alias of a Depot for Charts. " A rose by 
any other name will smell as sweet " ; and if another 
name quiets the scruples of tender constitutional con- 
sciences, it were unwise to quarrel with a word. 

But let us not be unjust to the services our gov- 
ernment has rendered to the cause of science. It has 
sent out Exploring Expeditions, which have contrib- 
uted largely to the knowledge of our globe and its 
inhabitants ; it has furnished the means of publishing 
a Nautical Almanac, under the care of Captain Davis, 
whose professional skill and scientific acquirements 
have already given it the highest authority, abroad as 
well as at home ; it has organized and munificently sup- 
ported the Coast Survey, which when completed will 



20 



be one of the most brilliant scientific achievements of 
the age ; it has redeemed the Smithsonian bequest, for 
the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, 
from its perilous situation as a State loan, honestly 
paid up the interest, and set an institution at work, — 
(I enter not here into the recent controversy on the 
construction of an act of Congress,) — which has cir- 
culated all over the world a series of original volumes, 
not only bestowing fame on the munificent giver, but 
crowning the recipient nation with the praise of hav- 
ing enlarged the boundaries of knowledge. 

It cannot be asserted, with any truth, that our coun- 
try is not rich enough to support the institutions, and 
encourage the investigations of science, on a scale of 
the most imposing magnitude. We exhibit to the 
world the unparalleled spectacle of a nation whose 
annual resources more than equal the annual expen- 
diture, besides being substantially free from debt. 
While other governments are anxiously devising the 
means to draw more money from the people, our cab- 
inet ministers are put to their wit's end to keep an 
overflowing treasury down to the level of the public 
wants. In private life, enormous fortunes are held by 
individuals, unburdened by the fixed demands that 
press upon the means of the great hereditary posses- 
sors in Europe. The proportion of small fortunes — 
of independent, though not excessive incomes — is 
unequalled elsewhere ; while among the classes who 
earn their bread by the toil of the brain or the labor 
of the hand, almost all are able to supply with modest 
competence their daily wants, and educate their chil- 
dren respectably. This state of things presents a 
striking difference from the condition of the most 



21 



prosperous nations in Europe. England, our mother 
land, in whose rural churchyards the dust of our an- 
cestors reposes, — whose pleasant homes are tenanted 
by families, kith and kin to our own, — is struggling 
under a national debt which staggers an ordinary 
financial imagination to conceive. The annual expen- 
diture, for carrying on her government, for supporting 
her army and navy, maintaining the royal household, 
and paying the pension list, is prodigious; and the 
burden of the national Church weighs heavily on the 
resources of the country. Notwithstanding the colos- 
sal fortunes inherited from the past, or created by 
commercial, manufacturing, or professional success, 
the poverty that pervades both city and country, even 
after the relief afforded by emigration to a disease 
seemingly desperate and remediless, is yet appalling 
in extent and intensity. It is true that England, at 
this moment, with her commerce, fleets, and armies, 
and her wonderful energies by sea and land, is the 
foremost power of all this world. The culture of a 
thousand years has moulded her surface into the most 
exquisite forms of natural beauty. The landscapes — 
the goodly prospects that spread in every direction — 
present a never-ceasing enchantment. The fields and 
parks of England seem to the traveller from another 
country a Paradise Eegained. The summer garniture 
of smiling plains, the velvet lawns, groves, and ave- 
nues, the green hedges and wild-flowers, resonant with 
the song of birds in endless variety, charm the eye 
and delight the ear ; while her stately castles tell at 
once the tale of ancestral glory and of present grandeur. 
And London is the heart of the world ; it is not a city, 
but, as a French writer describes it, a province covered 



22 



with houses. Yet, horribly discordant with the more 
than regal stateliness of its West End streets and 
squares and parks, hard by them want and wretched- 
ness and guilt and woe densely congregate in forlorn 
quarters, — presenting a ghastly spectacle, which sick- 
ens the heart, and makes hope to die within us. To 
call the condition of these outcasts of modern civiliza- 
tion beastly, is to wrong the character of any beast 
with whose natural history even Agassiz is acquaint- 
ed. But these unhappy beings have found their good 
Samaritans among the most gifted intellects, and the 
noblest names, that grace the roll of England's fame. 
The great writer who has increased the gayety of na- 
tions, and touched with the truest pathos that ever 
drew tears from human eyes the beating heart of the 
world, — whose genius, flashing out in the obscurity of 
his youth, encompassed his early manhood, and flames 
around his middle life with imperishable brightness, — 
whose writings, numerous and admirable as they are, 
constitute but a small part of his services to humanity, 
compared with the beauty of his daily life, crowned 
with deeds of good to man, — this man, now standing 
at the height of influence and fame, loved by the low- 
est as their brother and honored by the highest as 
their peer, having won his way to this preeminence 
by no unmanly compliance " where thrift may follow 
fawning," — this Charles Dickens must never be for- 
gotten in any allusion to the hopes or the greatness 
of England. Closely associated with him in works of 
beneficence, an eminent nobleman, the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, has consecrated his talents and experience, the 
influence of his high birth and his position as a peer 
of England, to the poor and lowly, — from the wretch- 



23 



ed factory children sinking un"der cruel tasks into pre- 
mature decrepitude, to the sons and daughters of woe 
and want who crowd the dreadful retreats of infamy 
in London. I the more readily pay my humble trib- 
ute to these illustrious names, so honorably represent- 
ing the genius and the rank of England, because both, 
I think, have been hardly dealt with in the popular 
judgment of this country ; the one, for the ill-con- 
sidered sarcasms which, in earlier days, he levelled 
against our countrymen ; and the other, for the free- 
dom with which, especially on the occasion of a recent 
visit of an American writer to England, he has spoken 
upon that ominous subject, negro slavery in the United 
States. But I submit that a few satirical descriptions, 
even were they unmerited, are not to weigh against the 
world of obligations we owe to Charles Dickens for hav- 
ing made society happier and better ; and though I do 
not think the Earl of Shaftesbury considers well all the 
difficulties, economical and constitutional, with which 
the appalling question of slavery is surrounded here, 
yet I do think, and I will say it in this place, that an 
English nobleman, whose active humanity has helped to 
rescue a hundred thousand of his own unhappy country- 
men — the outcasts of London — from the filthy dens 
in which they were perishing, body and soul, has 
earned the right to raise his voice of warning against 
the wrongs and crimes of nations, wherever existing, 
and under whatever pretexts or dire necessities their 
existence is endured. 

With all the difficulties of her position, what has 
not England done, inspired by the unconquerable spir- 
it of liberty, for the moral and intellectual improve- 
ment of the race % It is true the friends of universal 



24 



education are still struggling there, against a powerful 
party, for the establishment of those principles of un- 
sectarian instruction which here are held as axioms. 
Corporation interests set themselves in array against 
the increasing demands for secular education, and a 
large division of the Established Church, perplexed 
with fear of change, and I believe with honest fears of 
dangerous consequences, resist the introduction of a 
national system, unless under the safeguards of the 
national Church. But time — and no long time — will 
doubtless show all such apprehensions groundless. It 
is a noteworthy fact, that a Catholic gentleman, the 
Right Honorable Thomas Wyse, now her Majesty's 
ambassador in Athens, — a gentleman of the rarest 
intellectual endowments, the finest taste, and the most 
accurate learning, — has been one of the chief and 
most successful advocates of secular education, having 
by tongue and pen, and by personal efforts in and out 
of Parliament, most effectually labored in this great 
popular interest. He has been denounced by zealots 
of both Churches ; but it is a lesson for thoughtful 
minds, and may well suggest the wisdom of charitable 
construction to Protestant alarmists, that Protestant 
England will owe the inestimable blessing of free edu- 
cation, in great part, to the enlightened and generous 
Catholic whose eloquent writings have conferred upon 
him, in popular speech, the distinguishing appellation 
of Education Wyse. In the s\ir and turmoil of a dis- 
tant and costly war, the great measures of educational 
reform are urged forward with undiminished vigor, 
the very latest news from England having brought the 
gratifying intelligence, that Dissenters are no longer 
to be excluded from the honors of the ancient Univer- 
sity of Oxford. 



25 



It may be — though God avert the day — that the 
power of England shall in time be broken down. Far 
in the future her armies may be scattered, no more to 
maintain her martial prowess under the pomp of ban- 
ners on the stricken field. Her navies, now drawing 
their stately lines along the shores of Tenedos and 
Troy, or ploughing the waters of the Euxine, or guard- 
ing the Bosphorus and the palaces of ancient Byzan- 
tium from the Northern spoiler, or carrying their thun- 
ders to the coasts of the Baltic, may be swept from 
the seas on which they have so long borne the might 
of England in triumph ; her Bank, now gorged with 
wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to conceive, 
may be drained until its coffers are exhausted ; and 
power, and wealth, and martial glory, may pass, in 
the awful revolutions of history, to other lands. But 
the intellectual rule of England can never be over- 
thrown : the sceptre of Shakespeare and Milton, and 
Bacon and Newton, can never be broken. Her more 
than imperial sway over the minds of men shall 
make her, through all coming ages, a living force, 
a mighty agency, in th efulfilment of the destiny of 
man. 

In our country, there are noble advantages attached 
to the position of a man of science or letters. Emi- 
nent services in these departments are honored with a 
cordial response, not only from the lettered classes, but 
from the great heart of the people. Let a Lyell, or 
Agassiz, or Gould, or Gray, or Silliman, be announced 
to address an audience on the laws of nature, which 
they know so well how to expound, and the lecture- 
room is crowded with eager throngs hanging with rapt 
attention on the speaker's lips. Nothing surprises the 



26 



European inquirer more than the zeal with which 
common men resort by thousands to the scientific and 
literary courses of eminent teachers in America. Re- 
cently, on the continent of Europe, I was often ques- 
tioned by the friends of our great naturalist, curious 
to know the particulars of his brilliant career in the 
United States, and when I informed them that he was 
accustomed to lecture to audiences of more than a 
thousand hearers, — greatly understating the fact, 
like the honest Irishman who wrote to his friends at 
home that he ate meat in America once a week, for 
fear of being taken for a desperate romancer, if he 
told the whole amazing truth that he had it three 
times a day, — even then I was listened to with po- 
liteness indeed, but I could not help perceiving that 
they suspected me of drawing an uncommonly long 
bow. 

No one, familiar with the state of things among us, 
can have failed to be struck with the social considera- 
tion in which scientific and literary eminence is held. 
In some parts of the Old World, the most insignificant 
scion of an ancient and intellectually worn-out aristoc- 
racy — the twentieth son of the twentieth son of the 
Duke of half an acre, with a standing army of one — 
takes precedence socially of the greatest names in 
science, letters, or art. Here, too, the man of science 
may tranquilly pursue his investigations to the remot- 
est conclusions, with no fear of harm from the spirit 
of caste, or from traditional opinion, or popular preju- 
dice, or ecclesiastical dogma j — with no fear of harm, 
I say ; though he may have to encounter bitter words 
from the newspapers, the platform of the reformers, 
or even from the pulpit itself. When an eminent in- 



27 



vestigator published the conclusion to which he had 
arrived, that the human races are traceable to more 
than a single pair, — though the discussion was con- 
ducted in a purely scientific manner, without the 
slightest reference to political, or religious, or philan- 
thropic schemes or dogmas, — he was denounced at the 
South as the enemy of Moses, and at the North as the 
enemy of the blacks ; the slaveholder, who interpreted 
literally the book of Genesis, held him up to reproba- 
tion as a heretic ; and the Abolitionist, who laughs at 
the authority of Moses, branded him as the hireling of 
the South. But such hostile attacks on scientific con- 
clusions here must end in hard words ; and over hard 
words truth gains an easy victory. For this reason, 
the men of science in Europe, especially on the Con- 
tinent, look with longing eyes to America as the land 
of promise. One of the most eminent - — one who has 
been competed for by kings, whose labors have been 
received with applause by both hemispheres — said to 
me last year : " The future of science depends on Amer- 
ica. In this old, rotten Europe, we can do little or 
nothing against the tyranny of prescription and caste, 
and the overbearing rule of corporate interests. Here- 
after, science must look to your country." The feel- 
ing expressed by these frank and emphatic words is by 
no means uncommon among the literary and scientific 
men on the continent of Europe. I thought he exag- 
gerated the obstacles to progress in Europe, and the 
facilities enjoyed among us : but whatever of fact there 
may have been in that earnest language, adds to 
the solemn responsibilities of America, to give, at all 
times and in every way, a generous support to the 
cause of science and civilization, and not to disappoint 



28 



the hopes of those noble minds, who, while toiling for 
truth in the Old World, send to Heaven their aspira- 
tions for its final triumph in the New. 

But while we glory in such honorable facts, we must 
not shut our eyes to the serious deficiencies chargeable 
on our country. In the department of Natural Sci- 
ence, we have few collections, except those made by 
individual enterprise and at private expense. The 
Old World is still our school of letters and art, our 
scholars are still the pupils and pensionaries of Euro- 
pean literature. The Germans, whose achievements 
in every province of intellectual labor have made the 
name of their lettered race illustrious, furnish the eru- 
dition of the. world. Our artists must banish them- 
selves from their native land, because the great collec- 
tions of painting and statuary are found only under 
the skies of Italy. Having few resources of art at 
home, the Greenoughs, Powers, Crawford, Story, 
Paige, Thompson, whose genius and labors honor 
the American name, must wander to a foreign soil, 
made sacred by the genius of the past, and take their 
lessons in the Ufficii, the Pitti, — the Vatican and the 
Capitol. 

These wants may and ought to be supplied, so far 
as the nature of the case admits. True, we can never 
hope to bring the Apollo Belvedere, or the Parthenon, 
to our shores. We can, annex many things, but we 
cannot annex the Vatican, or the Museo Borbonico, or 
the buried city of Pompeii ; but we are rich and may 
buy copies of every work of art, and of every book 
that comes from a teeming press. It is no excuse to 
say we are a young people, and it takes time to build 
up great collections and vast libraries. The best libra- 



29 



ries in Europe are not so old as that of Harvard Col- 
lege ; Gottingen counts not half so many years, and 
the noble University Library of Berlin scarcely sur- 
passes the average age of man. The library of the 
University of Athens — although that city of ancient 
fame lay in ruins after the desperate and bloody war 
of the Eevolution, only five-and-twenty years ago — - 
now contains eighty thousand volumes, and is con- 
stantly used by six hundred students and forty learned 
professors. The smallest German principality has its 
university, its museums, its richly furnished library, 
compared with which our own, except the Astor 
Library in New York, are but poor and insignificant. 
Will it be said that a petty German principality, of a 
few square miles in extent, can support establishments 
which the United States are too young and too poor 
to maintain 1 

The museums and libraries of Europe are kept 
abreast with the progress of the age, by the munificence 
of even the despotic governments. Men of learning 
may investigate any subject, without the necessity of 
travelling from place to place, to find the books or 
specimens they need. Unhappily, men of learning are 
not always rich, and works of science, when published, 
are not always found in railway libraries, and bought 
by a discerning public, like popular novels. The as- 
tronomer, who lives laborious days in the profoundest 
researches, must publish his results by giving his time 
and labor gratuitously, and perhaps eke out his pub- 
lisher's balance against his subscription list by private 
tuition in the elementary mathematics. A great his- 
torical scholar plans a work for the delight and in- 
struction of the world : he must send to Europe and 



30 



buy books, and get manuscripts copied, at his own ex- 
pense : the good taste of the English and American 
public perhaps in time repays with interest the outlay 
that must be made, before the History of Ferdinand 
and Isabella and the Conquest of Mexico can be pro- 
duced. Another distinguished scholar writes a History 
of Spanish Literature, destined to take the highest 
rank at home and abroad, and to become the standard 
of authority in that department of elegant letters. 
But that work could not have been written in our 
country by any scholar, however accomplished, who 
was not at the same time endowed with a large share 
of this world's goods. Books must be purchased, 
public and private libraries in Europe must be visited, 
and thus, at a vast expenditure of time and talent 
and money, that great literary achievement is ac- 
complished, conferring on our country the honor of 
having produced a work on an interesting branch 
of European literature, which European scholarship 
welcomes as a precious addition to its treasures of 
learning. Could a poor man, however able, have 
written Bancroft's classical History of the United 
States 1 Could Longfellow have expounded Dante 
and Goethe to his classes, with the literary resources 
of Harvard College Library 1 Can any scholar write 
the history of Greek or Roman literature, with no 
other books than the College Library affords, and 
no other pecuniary means than a Professor's scanty 
salary? Is it possible, here or anywhere in the 
United States, for the scholar, in any department of 
knowledge, to maintain himself at the height of the 
age, — to know what is elsewhere known, and what 
he must know, if he would do justice to his subject or 
himself ? 



31 



And yet our relations with the rest of the world 
are peculiarly favorable to unobstructed progress. We 
are the friends of all, — the enemies of none. We 
are the heirs of all past ages. Greece and Rome and 
Mediaeval Europe have bequeathed their treasures, and 
placed their culture and wisdom within our reach. We 
can make our own the best contributions of the best 
minds in the present world, and all over the world. In- 
ventive genius is everywhere redeeming the hand of man 
from slavery, to give fuller scope to the thoughtful brain. 
The sweating brow is becoming a reminiscence, or a 
figure of speech. The forces of nature, working with 
no sense of fatigue, do willing homage to the mind of 
man, and render endless service to society by multiply- 
ing and improving production a thousand-fold; and 
no cities of meagre workmen, standing on the brink 
of famine, arrest by violence the progress of mechani- 
cal art, driven to despair by the spectres of falling 
prices and starvation. All this intellect disengaged 
from toil by the giant powers of nature should be so 
much gained to the cultivation and enlargement of 
knowledge. We sprang from a civilized nation, — not 
a horde of barbarians, — more than two centuries ago ; 
and for the longer part of that time we have had no 
greater difficulties to overcome than our brethren who 
staid at home; not so great as those which have 
checked the progress of other kindred and older 
nations. At the present moment the New World 
need lag behind the civilization of the Old only by the 
nine days in which the ocean steamers cross the divid- 
ing seas; and the returning voyage of these same 
ocean steamers ought to change the balance on the 
other side. 



32 



An ancient orator, claiming for his beloved Athens 
the leadership among the states of Greece, rests his 
argument chiefly on her preeminence in those intellect- 
ual graces which embellish the present life of man, 
and her inculcation of those doctrines which gave to the 
initiated a sweeter hope of a life beyond the present. 
Virgil, in stately hexameters, by the shadowy lips of 
father Anchises in Elysium, calls on the Roman to 
leave these things to others : — 

" Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera 
Credo equidem ; vivos ducent de marmore vultus , 
Orabunt causas melius, ccslique meatus 
Describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent ; 
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, 
Hae tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem, 
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos." 

These lines strike the key-notes to Greek and Roman 
character, — Greek and Roman history. During the 
long existence of the Athenian Republic, amidst the 
interruptions of foreign and domestic wars, — her ter- 
ritory overrun by Hellenic and Barbarian armies, her 
forests burned, her fields laid waste, her temples lev- 
elled in the dust, — in those tumultuous ages of her 
democratic existence, the fire of her creative genius 
never smouldered. She matured ancl perfected the art 
of historical composition, of political and forensic elo- 
quence, of popular legislation, of lyric and dramatic 
poetry, of music, painting, architecture, and sculpture; 
she unfolded the mathematics, theoretically and practi- 
cally, and clothed the moral and metaphysical sciences 
in the brief sententious wisdom of the myriad-minded 
Aristotle, and the honeyed eloquence of Plato. Rome 
overran the world with her arms, and though she did 



33 



not always spare the subject, she beat down the proud, 
and laid her laws upon the prostrate nations. Greece 
fell before the universal victor, but she still asserted 
her intellectual supremacy, and, as even the Roman 
poet confessed, the conquered became the teacher and 
guide of the conqueror. At the present moment, the 
intellectual dominion of Greece — or rather of Athens, 
the school of Greece — is more absolute than ever. 
Her Plato is still the unsurpassed teacher of moral 
wisdom ; her Aristotle has not been excelled as a phil- 
osophic observer ; her iEschylus and Sophocles have 
been equalled only by Shakespeare. On the field of 
Marathon, we call up the shock of battle and the 
defeat of the Barbarian host ; but with deeper interest 
still we remember that the great dramatic poet fought 
for his country's freedom in that brave muster. As 
we gaze over the blue waters of Salamis, we think not 
only of the clash of triremes, the shout of the onset, 
the psean of victory ; but of the magnificent lyrical 
drama in which the martial poet worthily commemo- 
rated the naval triumph which he had worthily helped 
to achieve. 

All these things suggest lessons for us, even now. 
We have the Roman passion for universal empire, under 
the names of Manifest Destiny and Annexation. I do 
not deny the good there is in this, nor the greatness in- 
herent in extended empire, bravely and fairly won. 
But the empire of science, letters, and art is honorable 
and enviable, because it is gained by no unjust aggres- 
sion on neighboring countries; by no subjection of 
weaker nations to the rights of the stronger ; by no 
stricken fields, reddened with the blood of slaughtered 
myriads. No crimes of violence or fraud sow the 



34 



seed of disease, which must in time lay it prostrate in 
the dust ; its foundations are as immovable as virtue, 
and its structure as imperishable as the heavens. If 
we must add province to province, let us add realm to 
realm in our intellectual march. If we must enlarge 
our territory till the continent can no longer contain 
us, let us not forget to enlarge with equal step the 
boundaries of science and the triumphs of art. I 
confess I would rather, for human progress, that the 
poet of America gave a new charm to the incantations 
of the Muse ; that the orator of America spoke in 
new and loftier tones of civic and philosophic elo- 
quence ; that the artist of America overmatched the 
godlike forms, whose placid beauty looks out upon 
us from the great past, — than annex to a country, 
already overgrown, every acre of desert land, from 
ocean to ocean and from pole to pole. If we combine 
the Roman character with the Greek, the Roman 
has had its sway long enough, and it is time the Greek 
should take its turn. Vast extent is something, but 
not everything. The magnificent civilization of Eng- 
land, and her imperial sway over the minds of men, 
are the trophies of a realm, geographically considered, 
but a satellite to the continent of Europe, which you 
can traverse in a single day. An American in London 
pithily expressed the feeling naturally excited in one 
familiar with our magnificent spaces and distances, 
when he told an English friend he dared not go to bed 
at night, for fear of falling overboard before morning. 
The states of Greece were of insignificant extent. On 
the map of the world they fill a scarcely visible space, 
and Attica is a microscopic dot. From the heights of 
Parnassus, from the Acrocorinthos, the eye ranges 



35 



over the whole land, which has filled the universe 
with the renown of its mighty names. From the 
Acropolis of Athens we trace the scenes where Socra- 
tes conversed, and taught, and died ; where Demosthe- 
nes breathed deliberate valor into the despairing hearts 
of his countrymen ; where the dramatists exhibited 
their matchless tragedy and comedy ; where Plato 
charmed the hearers of the Academy with the divinest 
teaching of Philosophy, while the Cephissus mur- 
mured by under the shadow of immemorial olive- 
groves ; where St. Paul taught the wondering but re- 
spectful sages of the Agora, and the Hill of Mars, the 
knowledge of the living God, and the resurrection to 
life eternal. There stand the ruins of the Parthenon, 
saluted and transfigured by the rising and the setting 
sun, or the unspeakable loveliness of the Grecian 
night, — beautiful, solemn, pathetic. In that focus of 
an hour's easy walk, the lights of ancient culture con- 
densed their burning rays ; and from this centre they 
have lighted all time and the whole world. 

I say then, again, if we cultivate the Roman arts of 
conquest and annexation, let us temper these too im- 
perious and grasping impulses by the more generous 
passions which conquered the Roman, even when he 
despised them. Such a blending of the Greek and 
Eoman, I think the American people already begin 
instinctively to understand. Amidst the warfare of 
contending parties, and the clashing of antagonistic 
interests, our literature is springing up, fresh with the 
dews of the morning and strong with the strength of 
noon. Our youthful science is shooting, with home- 
bred vigor, into ripened health and hardihood. We 
have artists honorably distinguished in the schools of 



36 



Europe. We have poets who are read wherever the 
English language is spoken, and translated where it is 
not. And despite the vulgar invectives of political 
leaders, which so often jangle out of tune and harsh, 
in the highest places of legislation, I think we, of 
these latter days, have listened to popular and senato- 
rial eloquence which rose to the level of the Rostrum 
and the Bema. 

Indeed, indeed, as I stood upon the Bema in Athens, 
and read the mighty sentences of Demosthenes, and to 
my imagination the Pnyx was again thronged with 
the returning shades of those Athenian citizens, who 
listened breathless to the statesman's voice, in the 
pride of triumph and in the crisis of danger, — with the 
memorials of past greatness around me, which in their 
very ruins make the city of Minerva the most attrac- 
tive city in the world, — my thoughts wandered away 
far from those scenes of classic and immortal inter- 
est, to the assemblies of American citizens who twice 
crowned yonder monumental height, listening in the 
open air to the eloquence of the American statesman 
and orator, who more than any of our times resembled, 
in the fervor of his patriotism, and the power and dig- 
nity of his eloquence, the great Athenian, as he por- 
trayed the illustrious deeds of our ancestors, and, in- 
spired with a strain of Attic enthusiasm, appealed to 
the ensigns of our present power, — the fleets, the 
harbors, the temples of the fair city of his affection, — 
which met his kindling eye as he looked around him. 

Gentlemen, if our country owes high and peculiar 
duties to the world, if she is bound by every tie of 
gratitude and honor to repay the vast debt she owes 
to the ages, by a liberal and generous contribution to 



37 



science, letters, and art, let these sacred obligations 
not be left to chance and the chapter of accidents. 
As the people are the sovereign here, the people must 
assume the duties, as well as the honors, of sovereignty. 
Whether legislative support should be more earnestly 
invoked, or some other form of public duty in this 
regard be more congenial to the temper of our ruling 
Demos, may not be clear ; but energetic action, having 
in view the support of literary and scientific organiza- 
tions on a scale commensurate with the dignity and 
power of the country and the just demands of the age, 
is a matter in which every citizen, sharing in the attri- 
butes of sovereignty, should feel a personal concern. 
I speak in behalf of no selfish interest. The scholar 
and artist and man of science work not for themselves. 
Riches and public honors are not the meed by which 
they seek to crown their labors. Other walks in life 
lead more directly to the goal of ambition and the 
prizes of wealth. The discovery of a new law in the 
natural world, of a new star in the heavens, of a 
new philosophical relation among ideas, of a new 
trait in ancient wisdom or eloquence, places in the 
hands of the discoverer no divining-rod that points to 
treasure hidden from the vulgar eye. Perhaps the 
love of fame, 

" Which the clear spirit doth stir," 

may silently mingle with the love of truth, and rouse 
the overtasked mind to fresh energy, by the hope of 
the " All hail hereafter." The vision of homage paid 
by coming ages, of prolonging an intellectual exist- 
ence beyond the present into the vast future, of 
moulding the thoughts and acting on the characters 



38 



of the generation that are to people all time, may 
move the soul of the scholar, as well as of other men. 
If this be an infirmity, the more of it the better. It 
is " the last infirmity of noble minds." 

But the duties are reciprocal. In the working of 
any human institutions, there will be much offensive 
to the taste, the feelings, and perhaps the consciences 
of delicate-minded men. Plato condemned the ex- 
cesses of the Athenian democracy, and kept himself 
aloof from public affairs. Reviewing the policy of the 
great men who had built up the power of Athens, and 
placed her at the head of a thousand subject cities, — 
Themistocles, Miltiades, Cimon, Pericles, — he passes 
sentence on them all, — excepting only Aristides the 
Just, — as bad guides of men, because, while extend- 
ing her dominions, they filled the hearts of the people 
with a passionate greed of conquest, insatiable desires 
of pleasure, a reckless disregard of morality, and a 
carelessness of consequences, which, like a mortal dis- 
ease, must lead to national decay and death. It was 
to be regretted that Plato and those who thought with 
him stood apart from the mass of their toiling coun- 
trymen, because the heady course of human passion, 
inflamed by demagogues, sometimes led them to 
wrong. So much the more did they need the lessons 
of moderation and virtue, which the calm judgment of 
the sages of speculation might have taught them. 
And yet, if we look into Plato's ideal Republic, — 
wherein he anticipates most of the notable schemes of 
social reform palmed upon the world in these days as 
original speculations, — we shall find, with many pas- 
sages of consummate wisdom and eloquence, a plan of 
polity so intolerable, so fatal to all the generous im- 



39 



pulses and affections of the heart, so rigidly subjecting 
every instinct of nature and every possibility of pri- 
vate happiness to an imperious, but merely theoreti- 
cal public good, that, compared with this philosophic 
dream, the worst excesses of the worst days of the 
Athenian Demos would have appeared a blooming 
Paradise. And who can express the blessings that 
ancient Demos transmitted to the after world. The 
genius of Greece still lingers over the land where its 
triumphs were achieved. Socrates and his teachings ; 
Demosthenes and his eloquence ; iEschylus, and the 
grandeur of his tragedy ; Sophocles, with his exquisite 
beauty, and calm, clear wisdom ; Phidias and his mar- 
ble gods ; Ictinos and his Parthenon, are a consecrat- 
ing presence still, in the land that gave them birth. 
If it is written in the book of Destiny that nations, 
like individuals, must have their period of decline, and 
their term of death, may the genius of our country 
also consecrate the spots trodden by the best and 
wisest of her sons ; may the spirit of her Platos haunt 
the soil where stood her Academic groves ; may the 
lingering accents of her Demosthenes still sound on 
the deserted hill-side where once his patriotic voice 
pierced the hearts of his contemporaries. If the great- 
ness of our republic is doomed to decay, and, like that 
of ancient Hellas, to become a silent figure in the gal- 
lery of History, God grant she may leave behind her 
such august memories as these ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




